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A Smattering of SEO News: 5/20/13

Hello, and welcome to the Smattering of SEO News for the week ending May 17th! There was even more than the usual amount of Google news in the last week, due to both the I/O conference and other newsworthy happenings, as well as some good news for Bing. Let’s get to it.

Polls Claim Only Small Number of Sites Recovered from Penguin – In an informal poll taken on Search Engine Roundtable, respondents were asked if their site had recovered from the big Penguin update which hit a year ago. Out of over 500 responses, only 9% of respondents claimed to have a full recovery, while 61% recorded no recovery, 18% said they partially recovered and 12% said they
weren’t affected at all.

Google Wants to Understand Multiple Types of Authorship – During a panel at a recent SMX conference, engineer Matt Cutts was asked if Google planned to expand authorship beyond written content. Cutts responded by saying while most content is written, Google does want to understand other types of content for which authorship applies. For example, the author of the article at Search Engine Land found that authorship applies to PDF files now, so with the growth of services like YouTube and Pinterest, might videos and pictures be next?

Google Takes Manual Action Against Several Thousand Linksellers – In a recent tweet by Matt Cutts, he said, “In fact, we took action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link-that-passes-PageRank network earlier today.” The link network wasn’t specified, and while this was a manual action, it would not be surprising if upcoming algorithm changes also targeted these kinds of linksellers.

German Court Orders Google to Block Libelous Words in Autocomplete Searches – In an odd turn of events, a German court overturned the ruling of two lower courts and says Google now must block autocomplete entries that could be seen as libelous. The owner of an unnamed nutritional supplements company, for which autocomplete entries for this company included words such as “fraud” and “Scientology”, brought this case. A Google spokesperson said it’s “incomprehensible” that Google should be held accountable for the searches of its users, which they can’t control.

Google to Launch Conversational Voice Search called “OK Google” – At Google I/O, it debuted the next version of its voice search called “OK Google”. This update will allow you to have a conversation of sorts with Google. For example, if you say, “OK Google, what’s the weather like in San Francisco?”, it will vocally tell you. If you then ask, “How far is it from here?”, it will tell you the distance to San Francisco from where you are, as it understands where “here” is contextually. This will be available on the desktop and mobile devices eventually.

Google Reports 82% of In-Store Shoppers Use Mobile Search to Make Buying Decisions – In a recent report, Google stated that 82% of users use mobile search to begin the process of buying a product, rather than using shopping apps or going to a brand’s website. The survey said 1 in 3 respondents also used mobile search rather than speaking to a store’s sales associate, and 53% of users use search to make price comparisons before a purchase. This data is similar to that in other recent reports showing a higher use of mobile search while making purchasing decisions.

In other SEO news…

Bing Rises Above 17% of Search Market Share in April for First Time – According to comScore’s April 2013 qSearch report, they reported that Bing’s share of the search market grew to 17.3% (up from 16.9% in March), passing 17% for the first time. Google’s share of the market dropped to 66.5% in April from 67.1% in March. Yahoo also saw a slight increase, up to 12% from 11.8% in March.

Delaware Least Likely State to Use Google, Yahoo Used More in Southern & Midwestern States – In a recent study by WebpageFX, it studied 35 million queries across all fifty states and found Google had a +70% market share in every state except Delaware, where it had a 69.49% market share. Google was used most in Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington D.C. and Colorado. Bing was used most in North Dakota, with 14.68% of the market share there. Arkansas was the state that used Yahoo most, with 11.69% market share, and was followed by Oklahoma, West Virginia and Ohio.

Did you hear any other SEO news that you thought was relevant last week? Feel free to comment below. And I’ll see you again next week!

Most Recent Posts

Here at Wpromote we have a whole department dedicated to helping over 400 small business clients succeed online, so this month we’re recapping updates in the online marketing industry specifically for our local small business clients.
90% Of Retail Shoppers Use Smartphones In Stores
Mobile continues to have a big impact on how customers are interacting with their local businesses. A recent survey of 12,000 US smartphone users found respondents commonly use their smartphones while shopping in a store for price comparisons, looking up product information, and checking out reviews online.
8 Things SMBs Should Consider Before Adopting Mobile PaymentsCurrently only 32% of small businesses accept mobile payments. For local merchants making the move to mobile payments can give businesses a competitive advantage, improve customer’s experiences, and ultimately save small business owners money. This checklist breaks down all the things your business should consider before adopting mobile payments.
Google Maps Now Lets You Send Locations From Phone To Desktop
You can now send a place you find on a desktop through Google maps and send it to your device. As long as you are signed in on both devices the location will be sent to your mobile device. This way you can easily get directions to the restaurant or store you just looked up on your desktop at your fingertips. This is just one of the many ways Google has further integrated desktop and mobile search.
5 Ways To Use What Consumers Want To Boost Your Local SEO Strategy
Consumers report using local businesses more than national chains, yet many local businesses are missing the opportunities to reach these customers. A study that found 42% of consumers use online review sites and social media to research a business online.This article highlights 5 ways you can utilize your consumers to boost your online presence on review sites, social media and other platforms.

Google is shutting down another of its fairly useful tools, the autocomplete API. While not crucial to SEO in any means, it was a neat API that led to tools that could be helpful in a lot of situations. All this and more in this week's smattering.
Google News

Google to Shut Down Autocomplete API on August 10th – Google recently announced that it would be shutting down its long-running autocomplete API in a few weeks. When asked why, they cited that they never anticipated it being used outside of a search context, and feel that it's so fully disconnected from providing users with a valuable search tool that it no longer “maintains the integrity” of their search functionality. It will be interesting to see which tools and websites this ultimately affects once shut down.

Google Reports 180% Increase In Hacked Sites Over Last Year – As part of the launch of their #NoHacked campaign, one of the pieces of data Google dropped on us is that they've seen a 180% increase in hacked sites over the last year alone. That, my friends, is simply staggering. As part of this new campaign, Google will provide insights into how to prevent being hacked on their blog every week, along with actionable tips and security-themed Hangouts with their staff. This will hopefully bring this crazy number down over the next year.

Panda Update Fallout Begins To Be Noticeable – The latest update to Panda has been slow, and while many webmasters aren't yet noticing much in the way of fluctuations, some are starting to see some volatility in their search results, mostly in the amount of keywords being ranked. For example, one marketing agency noticed that, before it was officially announced yet after the update had begun, card-maker Hallmark went from ranking for around 29,000 keywords to around 17,000, which is a massive drop. It's still relatively early days, but it's fascinating to try and gain a handle on what's happening after this latest update. We'll keep you posted as we get more information.

Google Will Search For Large Discrepancies Between Desktop And Mobile Site – When asked on Twitter about the differences between mobile and desktop platforms, Google's Gary Illyes stated that while they use mostly the desktop site for its rankings, they'll look to see if there are big differences between the desktop and mobile site to see if there's any foul play going on. While this seems like this would be one of those things that is obviously a given, apparently it happens enough that they check. So keep the content on your sites the same, I believe is the takeaway.

Google Ignores Dynamic, Tab-Based Content – A little while back, Google dropped something of a bombshell, in which they informed us that they don't value the content hidden behind tabs or accordion scripts as highly as fully visible content. Now Google's John Mueller has given even more information on this phenomenon, stating to Stack Overflow that if content behind a tab is dynamic – meaning it's not rendered until the tab is clicked – then it wont be indexed at all. It makes sense really: If a user can't see it even in the source code, then Google will ignore it as well.

Other News

Bing Traffic Drop Caused By HTTPS Switch – A week or so ago, many webmasters noticed that their traffic from Bing was dropping in their analytics tools. Bing has now admitted this was a result of their recent switch to encrypted search results, but hasn't been clear on whether this is a bug or a permanent change. We'll keep you updated as we find out more.

Related Posts

I usually write these news posts on Wednesdays, so at the time, there were murmurings of some "phantom update" at Google, as a lot of webmasters were noticing fluctuations in their rankings. Well, lo and behold, AFTER I wrote the news below, Google confirmed that Panda 4.2 has launched. WHEEE! Prepare to ride the roller coaster again my friends! That and more below!
Google News

Did A “Phantom Update” Happen Last Weekend? - Many webmasters, according to Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz, have been emailing him asking if Google had an update this past weekend, as there apparently was a lot of volatility in their rankings. One of his readers thinks it's similar to the odd update that happened last month which Google first denied then confirmed. We'll have to see if anything comes of it. Update: Since writing this, Google has now confirmed that they've launched Panda 4.2 this past weekend, but it'll take months to roll out, so keep an eye on those SERPs people!

Bad HTML Validation Can Impact A Variety Of SEO-Related Factors – In a recent Google Hangout, Google's John Mueller explained that while having badly validated HTML won't affect your rankings, it can affect aspects of your site in which visibility can be impacted, such as structured data, meta tags, or even links. Making sure your HTML is valid can really help your site achieve better SEO friendliness.

HTTPS Can Be A Rankings Tie-Breaker – According to a Tweet from Google's Gary Illyes, he stated that, if two sites are neck-and-neck for the top spot in a given search engine result, Google will give the nod to the site that has a proper HTTPS implementation. A “dealbreaker,” he called it, as it gives that site the edge to break a tie. Fascinating stuff.

Search Console Sitemap Indexation Bug Affecting Many Sites – Many webmasters have been noticing an odd drop in their indexed page amounts via XML sitemaps in the Search Console. Gary Illyes confirmed to Search Engine Land that they know about it, and it is indeed a bug, so if you've lost indexed pages, don't freak out. Hopefully a fix will happen soon.

All Top-Level Domains Treated The Same By Google – With all the brouhaha surrounding many of the new top-level domains, such as .london, .how, .guru and others, Google took an official stance on whether these affect rankings or not. In a new FAQ, when asked how TLDs effect rankings they state, “Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.” Makes sense.

Other News

Yahoo Testing Google-Like SERPs – According to screenshots taken from intrepid Tweeters, they noticed that Yahoo is playing with a Google-style Search Engine Results Page (SERP) which includes sitelinks and site-specific search boxes. It'll be interesting to see if Yahoo adopts this permanently.

Bing Analytics Suffering From Tracking Issue – Many webmasters have recently noticed that Bing's analytics were showing massive drops in traffic for their sites. Apparently it's due to a bug in which they're showing the wrong report segments in their analytics platform. No word from Bing at the time of this writing on a fix.

The Plethora of PPC News has some exciting news! Wait, what? News has news? Yes - we are switching up authors this week and every other week moving forward. Stay tuned for more changes!
Brand CPCs Surging
This past quarter, for the first time ever, paid search advertisers faced higher costs to show up on their own brand terms on Google than on Bing. Brand keyword CPCs, on average, rose nearly 40% year-over-year, and 10% quarter-over-quarter. Yikes! These keywords include brand + other phrases as well. If you are having this problem, you may want to start filling out this form.
Google Adds Target CPA And ROAS Projections
Ever wonder if you increased or decreased your target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) what would happen to conversions and unique conversions? Well, Google has you covered now, if you opt into this automated bidding strategy which uses the past two weeks of data to hit that sweet spot. The idea is to use the historical CPA data while AdWords works to optimize by either increasing or decreasing conversions to reach the target CPA goal. This update is now globally available as a part of Google's bid strategy tools.